Center: IUCRC Phase I The Ohio State University: Center for Accurate Georeferencing of the Environment (CAGE)

About This Grant

Geospatial data has become a cornerstone of modern society, enabling critical applications in navigation, national security, transportation, emergency response, infrastructure management, environmental monitoring, precision agriculture, and more. The rapid proliferation of smartphones, drones, satellites, and connected sensors has resulted in an explosion of geospatial data. However, the utility of this data depends on one fundamental requirement: accurate and reliable georeferencing. Without precise spatial positioning, data products become misaligned, leading to flawed analysis, compromised decision-making, and even threats to public safety and national security. The Industry University Cooperative Research Center (IUCRC) for Accurate Georeferencing of the Environment (CAGE) led by The Ohio State University with partner sites at Saint Louis University (SLU), in partnership and Purdue University (PU), is dedicated to advancing methods for accurate and reliable geo-referencing of diverse geospatial data sources. The center serves as a collaborative research hub uniting academic researchers, government agencies, and industry partners to address the technical and operational challenges in geo-referencing, sensor calibration, spatial data fusion, data quality assessment, and data-driven decision making. CAGE unites leading experts from The Ohio State University, Purdue University, and Saint Louis University to tackle three interconnected thrust areas: (1) Advanced Georeferencing providing resilient alternatives to GPS for navigation in denied environments—from Arctic expeditions to space missions, (2) Rigorous Quality Assurance and Control for industries like transportation and precision agriculture, and (3) Transformative Data Analytics by harnessing AI, machine learning for applications in smart farming, infrastructure maintenance, and autonomous systems. CAGE works closely with industry and government partners providing geospatial services and technologies across a broad range of industries. Within the geospatial community, CAGE addresses the urgent need for alternative positioning and georeferencing technologies that can serve as reliable backups in the event of GPS unavailability, exploiting expertise in promising new areas including signals of opportunity and environment-based solutions. CAGE also emphasizes research assessing and assuring the validity, accuracy, and reliability of geospatial data and derived products. CAGE addresses the entire geospatial data lifecycle, from data acquisition and curation to advanced processing, analysis, and application to ensure the highest level of accuracy throughout the entire pipeline and across different application areas. Importantly, all projects involve students and industry mentors ensuring pipeline development to address critical national workforce needs in the geospatial sciences. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.